I once dated an airline gate agent who'd moved to a C cup after years as an A. I had seen pictures of her—"before" pictures—and I have to admit that as I sat there, with the after picture in the flesh, it seemed to me she had made a reasonable choice. She was wildly proud of her new breasts and took her shirt off the first night we dated just to show me, long before we even kissed. "More is more," she told me as we sat thigh-to-thigh on her couch. We were 30 minutes from our first meal together, and there she was with her shirt off, her shoulders square, her back firm and upright. She asked me if I liked her posture. "My doctor said good posture is just as important as the implants." He had a point.

She admitted even then that the implants came at some cost. She spoke like a sage. "I didn't go to church for four weeks after I had the surgery," she said. "But people always forget who you were. They only remember what you are." She was, she told me, completely used to the change within a few months of the surgery. However, in the coming weeks, she introduced me to a series of breast-related routines that indicated otherwise. She didn't like any weight on her chest, not even my arm around her shoulder at the movies, because she could feel the implants. She couldn't sleep on her left side easily, though she asked me to favor her left breast during sex. She held a hand to one breast when she rolled over.

Look, I'm like any guy. I've always thought a woman's breasts were a tremendous pleasure, both publicly and privately. A real gift. But while I loved the way this woman looked, within weeks the presence of her implants dominated everything intimate between us, so much so that I started to feel they were like a really annoying pet. Like a really needy toy poodle, an indulgence that was running the household. Late in the game, in the days before we cut it off, she told me I could skip the nipples during foreplay. She tried to reassure me. The implants, she told me, had changed the sensation. "It's not bad exactly," she said. "It just feels a little grinding." I had to agree.